Latest revision as of 16:21, 7 July 2009

We now proceed to a special investigation of
the means and effects of militarism, taking as a paradigm the
Prusso-German bureaucratic, feudal and capitalist militarism,
that worst form of capitalist militarism, that state above the
state.

Though it is true that modern militarism is
but an institution of our capitalist society, it is none the less
true that it is an institution which has almost succeeded in becoming
an independent institution; an end in itself.

In order to fulfil its purpose militarism must
turn the army into a handy, docile, effective tool. It must raise
its equipment to the highest possible perfection and, on
the other hand, as the army is not composed of machines, but of
men, being a kind of living machinery, it must inspire the army
with the proper "spirit."

The first part of the problem is ultimately
a question of finance, which will be dealt with later. We shall
deal with the second part first.

The question presents three aspects.
Militarism seeks to create and promote the military spirit above
all and in the first line in the active army itself; secondly
in those portions of the population furnishing the reserves
of the army in case of mobilization; finally in all the other
parts of the population that are of importance for militaristic
and anti-militaristic purposes.

MILITARY PEDAGOGY. TRAINING SOLDIERS.

That proper "military spirit," also
called "patriotic spirit" and, in Prussia-Germany, "loyalty
to the king," signifies in short a constant readiness to
pitch into the exterior or the interior enemy whenever commanded
to do so. Taken by itself the most suitable condition for its
production is a state of complete stupidity, or at least as low
an intelligence as possible which enables one to drive the mass
as a herd of cattle in whatever direction is demanded by the interest
of the "existing order." The avowal of the Prussian
war minister, von Einem, who said that he liked a soldier loyal
to his king, even he were a bad shot, better than a less loyal
one however good a shot he might be, certainly came from the depth
of the soul of this representative of German militarism. But here
militarism finds itself in a bad quandary. The handling of arms,
strategy and tactics demand of the modern soldier not a small
measure of intelligence and cause the more intelligent soldier
also to be the more efficient, cæteris paribus. For
that reason alone militarism would no longer be able to do anything
with a merely stupid mass of men. Moreover, capitalism could not
use such a stupid mass, as the great mass of the people, especially
the great mass of the proletariat, have to perform economic functions
requiring intelligence. To be able to exploit, to secure the highest
possible rate of profit -- the task of its life which it cannot
escape -- capitalism is compelled by a tragical fate to foster
systematically and to a large extent among its slaves the same
intelligence which, as it knows quite well, must bring death and
annihilation to capitalism. All the attempts to guide the ship
of capitalism by skilful tacking, by a cunning cooperation of
church and school, safely between the Scylla of too low an intelligence
which would be too great an impediment to exploitation and would
make the proletarian even unfit as a beast of burden, and the
Charybdis of an education which revolutionizes the minds of the
exploited, enabling them to grasp their class-interests in their
entirety and necessarily bringing destruction to capitalism, must
end in dreary and hopeless failure. It is only the East Elbian[1] farmhands (who still may
be, as was once said, the most stupid workers indeed and the best
workers -- for the junkers, be it noted) who largely furnish militarism
with human material that can be commanded in herds without trouble,
purely like slaves, but can be used to advantage in the army only
with care and within certain limits, on account of an intelligence
which is even too low for militarism.

Our best soldiers are Social Democrats, is
a much quoted expression. It shows the difficulty of the task
of imbuing the conscript army with the proper military spirit.
As the mere unquestioning and slavish[2]
obedience does no longer suffice and is also no longer possible,
militarism must seek to dominate the will of its human material
by a roundabout way in order to create its shooting automata.
It must bend the will by working upon the men's mind and soul
or by force, it must decoy its pupils or coerce them. The proper
'spirit" needed by militarism for its purpose against the
foreign enemy consists of a crazy jingoism, narrow-mindedness
and arrogance, the spirit it needs for its purposes against the
enemy at home is that of a lack of understanding or even hatred
of every kind of progress, every enterprise and movement even
distantly endangering the rule of the actually dominating class.
It is in that direction that militarism, when moulding the character
of its charges by its milder means, must turn the mind and sentiments
of those soldiers whose class-interest removes them entirely from
the sphere of jingoism and makes them see in every step in advance,
including the overthrow of the existing order of society itself,
the only reasonable goal to be aimed at. We do not deny that with
the proletarian of military age class consciousness is usually
not yet firmly rooted, though he generally greatly surpasses the
bourgeois youth of the same age in independence of character and
political understanding.

It is an extremely bold and cunning system,
this system of moulding a soldier's intellect and feeling, which
attempts to supplant the class division according to social status
by a class-division according to ages, to create a special class
of proletarians of the ages from 20 to 22, whose thinking and
feeling are directly opposed to the thinking and feeling of the
proletarians of a different age.

In the first place the proletarian in uniform
must be separated locally, sharply and without any consideration,
from members of his class and his own family. That purpose is
attained by removing him from his home district, which has been
accomplished systematically especially in Germany, and above all
by shutting him up in barracks.[3]
One might almost describe the system as a copy of the jesuitical
method of education, a counter-part of the monastic institutions.

In the next place that segregation must be
kept up as long a time as possible, a tendency which, as the military
necessity of the long period of training has long since disappeared,
is thwarted by untoward financial consequences. It was substantially
that circumstance to which we owe the in troduction of the two-years'
military service in 1892.

Finally, the time thus gained must be utilized
as skilfully as possible to capture the souls of the young men.
Various means are employed for that purpose.

All human weaknesses and senses must be appealed
to to serve the system of military education, exactly as is done
in the church. Ambition and vanity are stimulated, the soldier's
coat is represented as the most distinguished of all coats, the
soldier's honor is lauded as being of special excellence, and
the soldier's status is trumpeted forth as the most important
and distinguished and is indeed endowed with many privileges.[4] The love of finery is appealed
to by turning the uniform, contrary to its purely military purpose,
into a gay masquerade dress, to comply with the coarse tastes
of those lower classes who are to be fascinated. All kinds of
little glittering marks of distinction, marks of honor, cords
for proficiency in shooting, etc., serve to satisfy the same low
instinct, the love for finery and swagger. Many a soldier has
had his woes soothed by the regimental band to which, next to
the glittering gew-gaw of the uniforms and the pompous military
ostentation, is due the greatest part of that unreserved popularity
which our "magnificent war army" can amply boast of
among children, fools, servant girls and the riff-raff. Whoever
has but once seen the notorious public attending the parades and
the crowds following the mounting of the Berlin palace guard must
be clear on that point. It is sufficiently known that the popularity
of the military uniform thus actually created among certain portions
of the civilian population, is a factor of considerable importance
to allure the uneducated elements of the army.

The lower the mentality of the soldiers, the
lower their social condition, the better is the effect of all
these means, for such elements are not only more easily deceived
by tinsel and finery on account of their weak faculty of discernment,
but to them the difference between the level of their former civilian
existence and their military position also appears to be particularly
great and striking. (One need only think of an American negro
or an East Prussian agricultural slave suddenly invested with
the "most distinguished coat.) There is thus a tragical conflict
going on, in as much as those means have less effect with the
intelligent industrial proletarian for whom they are intended
in the first line, than with those elements that need hardly be
influenced in that direction, for the present at least, since
they furnish without them a sufficiently docile military raw material.
However those means may in their case, too, contribute to the
preservation of the "spirit approved of by militarism.
The same purpose is served by regimental festivals, the celebration
of the Emperor's birthday, and other contrivances.

When everything has been done to get the soldier
into the mood of drunkenness, as it were, to narcotize his soul,
to inflame his feelings and imagination, his reason must
be worked upon systematically. The daily military school lesson
begins in which it is sought to drum into the soldier a childish,
distorted view of the world, properly trimmed up for the purposes
of militarism. This instruction, too, which is mostly given by
entirely incapable and uneducated people, has no effect whatever
on the more intelligent industrial proletarians, who are quite
often much more intelligent than their instructors. It is an experiment
on an unsuitable material, an arrow rebounding on him that shot
it. That has only lately been proved, in a controversy with General
Liebert about the anti-socialist instruction of soldiers, by The
Post and Max Lorenz, with the acumen generated by the capitalist
competition for profits.

To produce the necessary pliability and tractableness
of will pipe-clay service, the discipline of the barracks,
the canonization of the officer's[5]
and non-commissioned officer's[6]
coat, which in many respects appears to be truly sacrosanct and
legibas solutus, have to do service, in short, discipline
and control which bind the soldier as in fetters of steel in regard
to all he does and thinks, on duty and off duty. Each and every
one is ruthlessly bent, pulled and stretched in all directions
in such a manner that the strongest back runs danger of being
broken in bits and either bends or breaks.[7]

The zealous fostering of the "church"
spirit, which was explicitly demanded as a special aim of military
education in a resolution submitted to the budget commission of
the Reichstag in the month of February, 1892, and then voted down
(without prejudice, by the way), is another method of the kind
to complete the work of military oppression and enslavement.

Military instruction and ecclesiastical influence
are at one and the same time methods of kind persuasion and compulsion,
but the latter mostly only in a carefully veiled fonn of application.

The most attractive bait that is employed to
make up and fill the important standing formations of the army
is the system of reengagement of men whose time has expired, who
are given a chance to earn premiums as non-commissioned officers[8] and are promised employment
in the civil service after they leave the army.[9]
It is a most cunningly devised and dangerous institution which
also infects our whole public life with the militaristic virus,
as will be shown further on.

The whip of militarism, the method by which
it forces men to obey, reveals itself above all in the disciplinary
system,[10] in the military penal
law with its ferocious threats for the slightest resistance against
the so-called military spirit, in the military judiciary with
its semi-mediaeval procedure, with its habit of meting out the
most inhuman and barbaric punishments for the slightest insubordination
and its mild treatment of the transgressions committed by superiors
against their subordinates, with its habit of juggling away, almost
on principle, the soldier's right of self-defence against his
superiors. Nothing can arouse more bitter feeling against militarism
and nothing can at the same time be more instructive than a simple
perusal of the articles of war and the records of the military
penal cases.

The disciplinary beatings (ragging) to which
the officers of English grenadier guard regiments are wont to
regale each other with a laudable democratic zeal deserve to be
mentioned as a curiosity.

This chapter also includes the maltreatment
of soldiers, which will be specially dealt with on a later occasion.
It forms, it is true, not a legal, but in practice perhaps the
most effective, of all violent disciplinary methods of militarism.

Thus they attempt to tame men as they tame
animals. Thus the recruits are drugged, confused, flattered, bribed,
oppressed, imprisoned, polished and beaten, thus one grain is
added to the other and mixed and kneaded to furnish the mortar
for the immense edifice of the army, thus one stone is laid upon
the other in a well calculated fashion to form a bulwark against
the forces of subversion.[11]

That all those methods of alluring, disciplining
and coercing the soldier partake of the nature of a weapon in
the class-struggle is made evident by the institution of the one-year
volunteer. [Young men with high-school education, which in Germany
can hardly be attained by youths belonging to the working class,
have the privilege of serving but one year instead of two, paying
for their food, lodgings, uniform, etc.] The bourgeois offspring,
destined to become an officer of the reserves, is generally above
the suspicion of harboring anti-capitalist, anti-militarist or
subversive ideas of any description. Consequently he is not sent
out of his home district, he need not live in the barracks, nor
is he obliged to attend the military school- or the church, and
he is even spared a large part of the pipe-clay drill. Of course,
if he falls into the clutches of discipline and the military penal
law, it is exceptional and usually with harmless results, and
the habitual oppressors of the soldiers, though they frequently
nourish a hatred against all "educated people," only
rarely venture to lay hands on him. The education of officers
furnishes a second striking proof for this thesis.

Of exceptional importance for the discipline
of an army is the coöperation of masses of men which
does away with the initiative of the individual to a large extent.
In the army each individual is chained to all the rest like a
galley slave, and is almost incapable of acting with freedom.
The combined force of the hundreds of thousands forming the army
prevents him with an overwhelming power from making the slightest
movement of his own volition. All the parts of this tremendous
organism, or rather of this tremendous machinery are not only
subject to the suggestive influence of the word of command, but
also to a separate hypnotism, a mass suggestion whose influence,
however, would be impotent on an army composed of enlightened
and resolute opponents of militarism.

The two tasks of militarism, as will be seen,
do not at all harmonize always in the department of military education,
but are often at cross-purposes. That is not only true of training,
but also in regard to equipment. War training demands ever more
imperatively a continuously growing measure of initiative on the
part of the soldier. As a "watch-dog of capital" the
soldier does not require any initiative, he is not even allowed
to possess it, if his qualification as a suicide is not to be
destroyed. In short, war against the foreign foe requires men;
war against the foe at home, slaves, machines. And as regards
equipment and clothes the gaudy uniforms, the glittering buttons
and helmets, the flags, the parades, the cavalry charges and all
the rest of the nonsense can not be dispensed with for producing
the spirit necessary for the battle against the interior enemy,
though in a war against the exterior enemy all these things would
positively bring about a calamity; they are simply impossible.[12] That tragical conflict, the
numerous aspects of which can not be dealt with exhaustively in
this book, has not been comprehended by the well-intentioned critics
of our militarism, who in their simplicity only use the standard
applicable to a system of training for war.

That antagonism of interests within militarism
itself, that self-contradiction from which it suffers, has the
tendency of becoming more and more acute. Which of the two opposing
sets of interest gets the upper hand depends at a given time on
the relation existing between the tension in home and foreign
politics. Here we see clearly a potential self-destruction of
militarism.

When the war against the interior enemy, in
case of an armed revolution, puts such great demands on military
art that dressed-up slaves and machines no longer suffice to fight
him down the last hour of the violent domination of the minority,
of capitalistic oligarchy will also have struck. It is of sufficient
importance for us to note that the described military spirit as
such confuses and leads astray the proletarian class-consciousness
and that militarism, by infecting our whole public life, serves
capitalism with that spirit in all other directions, apart from
the purely military, for instance, by creating and promoting proletarian
docility in face of economic, social and political exploitation
and by thwarting as much as possible the struggle for the liberation
of the working class. We shall have to deal with this later on.

SEMI-OFFICAL AND SEMI-MILITARY ORGANIZATION OF THE CIVIL POPULATION

Militarism also seeks to influence those
persons who do not yet or who no longer belong to the active army,
to as large an extent, for as long a period and as strongly as
possible. It attempts to accomplish its purpose in the first place
by arrogating to itself the greatest possible authority over those
persons, for instance, by a system of control, by largely extending
the military jurisdiction, the procedure by the military courts
of honor (which is even employed against retired officers) and
even the competence of the military command. This method is characterized
with particular clearness in the muster of the reserve. soldiers,
when the men called up are placed under military jurisdiction,
which is claimed by the military authorities to last for the
whole day, though it is manifestly against the law, there
is not the slightest ground for establishing such a right, it
is a simple usurpation. In this connection mention must further
be made of the cadet corps and veterans, associations with their
semi-official or semimilitary organization, their aping of the
military get-up, fiddle-faddle and junketings. A chief part in
that department of militaristic activity is played by the mischievous
reserve-officer system, which carries the military caste spirit
into the civilian society and perpetuates that spirit and, which
is still more important, places the higher officials of the state
and communal civil administration, as well as those of the law
and educational system, almost without an exception under military
discipline, subjecting them to the militaristic spirit, to the
whole militaristic view of life, and thus stifling in them in
advance any inconvenient impulse of opposition that might possibly
arise even in their official minds.[13]
By these means the tractableness of the civil executive is secured,
an object reached in regard to the subalterns and lower officials
by means of the systems giving preference to the claims of former
military persons to public posts. Provision is thus made that
class justice and the class educational system shall bear their
proper military stamp and that self government[14]
shall be kept back with a firm hand. Also worthy of mention is
the order that officers, whether in active service or not, must
not do any literary work, which, alongside the highly instructive
Gädke[15] case, is the
most conclusive symptom of the reckless desire of militarism for
intellectual subjection and the centralized supervision of everything
within its reach, and also indicates its tendency continually
to extend its sphere of influence, legally or illegally, its desire
for unlimited growth, its unlimited appetite for power.

OTHER WAYS OF INFLUENCING THE CIVILIAN POPULAION IN A MILITARY DIRECTION

An even more important result of the militaristic
hunger for expansion than the mischievous reserve-officer system
is the nuisance of the military claimant system in public employment,
which, besides the purely military purpose mentioned, serves in
no less a degree the purpose of sending into all the branches~of
the state and municipal administration a band of always faithful
and enthusiastic representatives and propagandists of the militarist
tic spirit. By this method it is intended at the same time to
insure the trustworthiness and loyalty of the bureaucracy serving
capitalism, and to spread among the mass of the people
who are particularly in need of education the "right,"
"state conserving" way of thinking. That "educational"
purpose of the system was avowed with touching unanimity and frankness
by Chancellor Caprivi and the representatives of the ruling classes
in the Reichstag debates on the premiums for non-commissioned
officers, in February, 1891. Thus, after the corporal had to leave
the teacher's desk, the conservative ideal of our popular educational
system has fortunately arrived again by a devious route at the
non-commissioned officer.[16]

True, the educational results are very meagre
ones. The poor fellows with their military claims for subordinate
positions are too badly paid. After all, even a German non-commissioned
officer is not to be had indefinitely for a pittance and the honor
of serving the King of Prussia.[17]
It is the eternal problem of buying up the revolution !

In this connection it should be mentioned that
the same methods which are employed to arouse and to keep alive
the military enthusiasm of the soldiers themselves, as, for instance,
all the display and pomp, likewise influence the non-military
population, i.e., those elements 'from whose ranks the army
is recruited, who form its background, who have to bear its expense
and who are in "danger" of falling a prey to the interior
foe. The British secretary for war, Mr. Haldane, proved himself
an apt pupil on his Prussian visit in the fall of ~906, when he
learned that. He expressed the thought that a valuable secondary
effect of militarism was that it educated the people in sobermindedness
and faithfulness to duty by ' bringing them into closer contact
with the army and war preparations.

Militarismpossesses
still another means, but one of quite a different kind, to spread
its spirit, viz., in its character as a consumer and producer
and in its influence over great industrial undertakings of the
state which are of strategical importance.

Quite a host of manufacturers, tradesmen and
merchants, with their employees, live by the army, people who
take part in the production and the transportation of all commodities
necessary for its equipment, lodging and maintenance, and of all
articles of consumption needed by the soldiers. These beneficiaries
of the army often positively determine the character of the whole
public life of a place, especially in small garrison towns, and
the most powerful among them rule like princes over large communities
and play the first fiddle in their state and in the empire. They
owe their influence to militarism which allows itself to be fleeced
and bamboozled by them with astonishing patience, and return thanks
(one good turn deserves another) by becoming its most fervent
propagandists, for which part they are, of course, already cut
out by their capitalist interests. Who does not know the names
of Krupp, Stumm, Ehrhardt, Löwe, Wörmann, Tippelskirch,
Nobel, Powder Trust, etc. -- Who has not heard of Krupp's usurious
rates for armor plate, of the Tippelskirch profits with the bribes
appertaining to them, of the exorbitant freight and demurrage
charges of Wörmann, the net 100 and 150 percent. profit of
the Powder Trust which lightened the purse of the German Empire
by many a million? In Austria the frauds of the army contractors
have been especially sensational. And every campaign means for
that parasitic crowd (not only in Russia) a golden fraudulent
harvest. These mighty gentlemen, as was said before, repay militarism
like true Christians for allowing them to rob it, or rather the
people. They pour out the holy ghost of militarism over "their"
workers and all that are dependent on them, and conduct a relentless
war against the forces of revolution. Of course, neither the workmen
nor the great majority of the small army contractors have
a real material interest in the army. The countries that have
no standing army are certainly not inferior in general well-being
and prosperity of commerce and industry to the countries possessing
a standing army, and the persons employed in the branches of military
production certainly would not be worse off economically if there
were no army. But as a rule they do not see beyond their nose
and submit only too readily to the strong militaristic influence,
so that an oppositional propaganda meets with great difficulties.

As an employer in great industrial undertakings
(such as military store-houses, canning factories, clothing factories,
remount-depots, arms and munition factories, navy yards, etc.)
militarism does not only willingly and exclusively hand over its
employees (on October 31, 1904, there were altogether 54,723 persons
employed in industrial establishments owned by the administration
of the German army and navy) to all reactionary patriotic demagogues,
as, for example, the imperial anti-socialist union, it also attempts
to permeate them systematically and ruthlessly with the patriotic
militaristic spirit, by bestowing titles and decorations on them,
arranging for them festivals in the manner of the veterans' associations,
promising them impossible pensions, by outlawing the trade union
and introducing into its shops a veritable barracks discipline.
Among the government work-shops the shops of the military administration
present the hardest problem in the campaign for the enlightenment
of the proletariat. There is naturally a limit to the influence
exercised by the forces hostile to the labor movement, and it
can hardly be that the administration of the army still cherishes
any illusions in view of the Social Democratic successes, especially
among the workers at the imperial navy yards. The very childish
threat to close down the military shops in case the Social Democratic
vote among the workers should in crease, a threat employed at
Spandau during the election of 1903, can impede the spreading
of class-consciousness as little as any other threat, so long
as militarism by giving its workers niggardly proletarian pay
makes them over to the Social Democracy. One need but recall the
frequent wage movements in the royal factories, the numerous conflicts
of the men employed there with the military administration, conflicts
which often assume an animated form, in order to overcome one's
pessimism in regard to these workers.

The railroads, the postal and telegraphic services
are institutions of decisive strategical importance, not only
for the war against the exterior, but also for the war against
the interior enemy. Those indispensable strategical factors can
be made useless for militarism by a strike, which would lead to
a complete paralysis of the military organism. It is therefore
quite natural that militarism should earnestly strive to imbue
with its spirit the minds of the officials and workmen be. longing
to the staffs of those industries of communication and the factories
connected with them (railroad-shops, car factories, etc.). The
unscrupulous manner in which this purpose is being pursued is
not only demonstrated by the system of military claimants for
civil employment, previously described, but also by the fact that
in several states those employees have been placed under the military
law, it is further shown by their political condition, in the
militarist countries where they have been deprived of the right
of combination either by administrative procedure (as in Ger many
and France) or by special laws (as in Italy, Holland, and also
Russia). Naturally, we do not deny that apart from those military
interests the capitalist state guards its general interests in
preventing its employees in those industries of communication
from being captured by its enemies. Those efforts, too, will necessarily
be fruitless in the long run, however great the difficulties they
prepare for the labor movement. They fail on account of inadequate
wages, on account of the positively proletarian mode of existence
of the employees of the communication systems.

MILITARISM AS MACHIAVELLISM AND A POLITCAL REGULATOR

Militarism thus appears in the first place
in the army itself, then as a system reaching beyond
the army and embracing all of society in a net of militaristic
and semi-militaristic institutions (such as the control system,
the prohibition of literary activity, court of honor, the reserve-officer
system, the provision for time-expired non-commissioned officers,
the militarization of the whole bureaucratic apparatus [due above
all to the mischievous reserve-officer system and the military
claimants for public positions], cadet corps, veterans' associations,
etc.), further as a system of saturating the whole private
and public life of our people with the military spirit for
which purpose the church, the schools, and a certain venal art'
as well as the press, a despicable literary crowd and the social
prestige, with which our "splendid war army" is ever
being surrounded as by a halo, cooperate in a tenacious
and cunning fashion. By the side of the Catholic Church militarism
represents the acme of Machiavellism in the world's history and
the most Machiavellian among all the Machiavellian institutions
of capitalism.

The exploit of the Köpenick cobbler-captain,
previously mentioned, may be regarded as a compendium of that
whole militaristic art of education and its results, the most
sublime of which is the veritable canonization of the officer's
coat by the whole bourgeois society. In an examination, lasting
six hours, to which this jail-bird subjected a sample of our army,
our bureaucratic apparatus and the allegiance of the Prussian
subject, all these probationers passed with such great honors
that even their teachers were speechless with astonishment at
that quintessence of their pedagogy. No Gessler's hat has ever
found such willing submission and self-humiliation as the cap
of the immortal Captain of Köpenick, no holy coat of Trèves
has ever been worshipped so religiously as his unit form. That
classical satire whose enormous effectiveness consists in its
having hunted to death militarism's own pedagogic principles,
ought to hunt to death militarism amidst the scornful laughter
of the world if -- yes, if that same bourgeois society, which
in regard to militarism now finds itself for the moment in the
position of the sorcerer's apt prentice who evoked the spirits
but could not get rid of them, did not need militarism as badly
as its daily bread and the air it breathes. The same old tragical
conflict. Capitalism and its powerful major-domo, militarism,
do not love each other at all, but rather fear and hate each other,
for which they have many a reason; they look upon each other (for
the major-domo has acquired sufficient independence) only as a
necessary evil, for which again they have many a reason. The lesson
of Köpenick which bourgeois society can not turn to its profit
will therefore only remain a convincing argument for anti-militarist
propaganda, for the Social Democracy which flourishes all the
more the more militarism pushes its principles to their extreme
conclusions.

What the Captain of Köpenick means for
militarism in the domain of practical swindling, the inimitable
Gustav Tuch was for it in the domain of honest theorizing, towards
the end of the eighties. In his bulky volume, "The Expanded
German Military State in its Social Significance," he sketched
a future society of which the all illuminating, warming, directing
central sun is militarism, its heart and soul, the only true "national
and civilized socialism", where the whole state is trans.
formed into the image of the barracks, the barracks being grammar
school, high-school and a factory for producing patriotic spirit,
the army an all comprising organization of strike-breakers. That
ecstatic hallucination about the millennium of militarism was
indeed mere methodical madness, but the very fact that it was
a methodical madness, which imagined the militaristic aims
and methods apart from all checks and carried them to their extreme
conclusions, lends to it a symptomatic significance.

At least in one sphere of prime importance
militarism, as will be shown more conclusively later on, is to-day
already the central sun around which move the solar systems of
class legislation, bureaucracy, police rule, class-justice and
the clericalism of all denominations. It is the ultimate, some
times recondite, sometimes patent regulator of all class politics,
all tactics of the class-struggle, not only for the capitalist
classes, but also for the proletariat, in regard to its economic
organization no less than in regard to its political organization.

↑A word coined in Germany to describe those parts of Prussia situated east of the river Elbe, the home of the Prussian junkers. [TRANSLATOR.]

↑"Kadavergehorsam" (the obedience of the corpse) is the expressive word used in the German original. [TRANSLATOR.]

↑A dangerous method from a sanitary point of view, which in France, for instance, is leading to a very extensive infection of the people with tuberculosis and syphilis. The French army shows from five to seven times more cases of tuberculosis than the German army. In a few decades, exclaims a warning voice in France, France will be decimated if the barracks system be not abolished. young men. Various means are employed for that purpose.

↑We need only point to the intentioned helplessness of the police in face of disorderly soldiers, and especially officers. The reader is further referred to the privilege of the soldiery to march in processions of unending lengths through the cities and thus to disturb traffic greatly without rhyme or reason -- to satisfy, of course, the demands of military æsthetics. The acme of the ridiculous conceit of this carefully reared craziness was seen some years ago in Berlin when the fire brigade, hastening to a fire, was simply stopped by a military column that crossed its route and that felt no inclination to have its beautiful and majestic order deranged. It is true, this was condemned later on.

↑These are indeed strange saints! The reader may remember the Bilse case of the month of November, 1903, the many small garrisons" after the Forbach model, the gambling and champagne decrees, the officers' dueling practices (that fine fleur of the officers' honor), the stabbings of Brüsewitz and the shooting propensities of Hüssener, the Ruhstrat affair and that of the "harmless," the novels of Bilse and Beyerlein depicting the life of the officers with photographic truth, "First-class People" by Schlicht (Count Baudissin), the scandals about Jesko von Puttkamer and, last but not least, that about Prince Arenberg which also belongs to this category. The French "Little Garrison," Verdun, raised much dust in the fall of 1900. In the eyes of the worshippers of the uniform all these things are of course mostly considered as mere "amiable, piquant weaknesses" of the worshipped saint, who is, however, very particular about people confessing the Christian creed. Naturally, we find here, too, that international solidarity of the noblest and best. An interesting case is the ragging practice of the officers of the English grenadier guard regiments, which were exposed at the beginning of 1903.

↑The German non-commissioned officer has been called the "representative of God on earth."

↑The most shocking proof is furnished by the statistics of suicides among soldiers. Those suicides of soldiers are another international phenomenon. According to official "statistics" one soldier among 3,700 committed suicide in Germany in I90I; in Austria, one among 920 In the I0th Austrian army corps 80 soldiers and 12 officers committed suicide in I901, 127 others became insane and left as invalids in consequence of self-mutilation and maltreatment. In the same period 400 men deserted and 725 were condemned to hard labor or close arrest. In Austria, of course, the conflict of nationalities greatly contributes to aggravate the situation.

↑This premium system, with a maximum of 1000 marks was introduced for the whole of Germany in I89I, after having been in existence before that time in Saxony and Württemberg and after having had a forerunner in the empire in the "non-recurrent extra-pay." It is also met with elsewhere; in France, however, where the amounts are much higher (up to 4,000 francs), it has been employed with little success. The schools for non-commissioned officers are also a case in point.

↑The speech made by Chancellor Caprivi (Bismarck's successor) in the Reichstag, on February 27, 1891, is the classical confession of a noble capitalist-militarist soul of its troubles and anxieties, its hopes and aims and the methods adopted in the pursuit of those aims. It throws wide open a window through which we can have a good look at the most secret parts of that soul. The speech begins with the statement that the government refrained from re-introducing the expired anti-socialist law [by which Bismarck had sought to fight down socialism during the preceding dozen years or so -- TRANSLATOR] only on the understanding that all possible measures be resorted to in order to cut the ground from under the feet of the Social Democracy and engage in a struggle with it; one of those measures (clearly a substitute for the anti-socialist law) was to consist of the premiums for non-commissioned officers in conjunction with the "Zivilversorgungsschein" (a warrant entitling the holder to a place in a civil office). Caprivi continued: "The demands made on non-commissioned officers increase on account of the growing education of the nation. A superior can fill his position only if he feels superior to the men entrusted to his charge....
"The maintenance of discipline has in itself become more difficult, and it becomes harder still when we have to take up the struggle with the Social Democracy; I mean by this not the struggle by means of shooting and bayoneting. My memory goes back to the year 1848. Conditions were far better at that time, for the ideas had then not arisen through long years of propaganda; they cropped up suddenly and the old non-commissioned officers had a much easier task in dealing with the men than they have now in dealing with the Social Democracy. (Quite right! on the benches of the parties of the Right.) And, touching upon the most extreme case, we want far better non-commissioned officers in street fighting against the Social Democracy than in fighting against the enemy. When facing the enemy the troops can be filled with enthusiasm and willingness to sacrifice by means of patriotism and other lofty sentiments. Street fighting and all that is connected with it is not calculated to raise the self-reliance of the troops, who always feel that they are facing their countrymen." . .. "The non-commissioned officers can retain their ascendancy only if we seek to raise their status. The allied governments [this is the official title of the German federal government -- TRANSLATOR] desire to raise the level of the class of the non-commissioned officers." He went on to say that it was necessary to create a "class of people" who were "bound to the state with every fibre of their existence."
This is likewise a fine description of the psychology of the elite troops.

↑Arrest combined with the deprivation of food, bed and light; extra-drill, etc.; the barbaric "tying up" in war-time. The Austrian practice of "binding hand and foot" and "tying up," the Belgian cachots, the international naval cat-o'-ninetails and similar devices are well known. Less well remembered are perhaps the atrocious instruments of torture employed in the French disciplinary sections, even against "political" refractory elements -- the poucettes, the menottes and the crapaudine (see the pamphlet, "Les bagnes militaires," published in 1902 by the Fédération socialiste autonome de Cher, a speech by Breton in the French Chamber, with illustrations; Georges Darien, "Biribiri," (the collective name of all military disciplinary institutions in North Africa), Dubois-Desaulle, "Sous la casagne," both published in Paris by Stock. Material about the compagnies de discipline, pénitenciers and the travaux forces (penal companies, penitentiaries and hard labor) in the French Foreign Legion and the victims of these institutions can be found in Däumig's article in the Neue Zeit, vol. 99-100, p. 365, and especially p. 369. At this writing energetic attempts are being made to suppress the "biribiri," (Debates of the French Chamber, December 8 and 10, 1906).

↑The military results of these educational methods are dealt with elsewhere. We must also point out their moral results, which induce the bourgeois, the anarchist and semianarchist opponents of militarism to let themselves be carried away by an indignation breathing an uncommon passion and delivered with a verbose pathos. "The army is the school of crime" (Anatole France); "drunkenness, sexual immorality and hypocrisy, that is what life in the barracks teaches" (Prof. Richet). According to the "Manuel du soldat" the time of military service is an "apprenticeship in brutality and vulgarity"; "a school of debauchery"; it leads to "moral cowardice, submission and slavish fearfulness." Indeed, one can scarcely imagine certain military festivals without the patriotic drunkenness, which is of course "upholding the state." Consult the Leipeiger Volkszeitung, of December I, 1906 about "the drinking and rioting festivals" of the veterans' associations (words used by Pastor César). The sanitary results are likewise anything but gratifying. Concerning the French army, see p. 64, note 3; the sanitary state of the standing armies of England and America, those democratic countries, is downright terrible; the death rate is far higher in those countries than in Germany. Cf. Surgeon-General R. M. O'Reilly's report of 1906 with regard to dysentery and alcoholism.

↑We naturally include in the battle against the interior enemy the fight carried on against the spirit of international solidarity which is opposed to "militarism for abroad."

↑ It should be explained that in Germany it is the ambition of most well-to-do young men to become a lieutenant of the reserve after having served in the army for one year as a volunteer. The title of lieutenant of the reserve is the key to official society. [TRANSLATOR ]

↑The bold exploit of the "captain of Koepenick" that ingenious cobbler and jail-bird, has exactly in this connection been pointed to as the writing on the wall, and that also by Liberals.

↑Colonel Gädke, when no longer in active service, had criticized the German war minister in the columns of the Berliner Tageblatt, a radical newspaper whose military expert he was at the time. The criticism concerned a speech in the Reichstag in which the minister had defended the duel. Gädke had to appear before a court and lost his military title. He then took the case before the imperial (federal) court and won. [TRANSLATOR.]

↑Liebknecht here refers to the former custom of making old superannuated soldiers school-teachers. [TRANSLATOR.]

↑There exists in Germany a kind of union of these officials -- The Association of German Military Claimants of Civil Employment.